1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for distributing a query.
2. Description of Related Art
In a reliable environment with a “closed” data set, a query can be issued wherein the data set is queried in its entirety. In a distributed network environment data is often held in multiple places, and current technologies allow the querying of each data set. However, issues remain regarding how to achieve querying in a distributed network environment using a single query across multiple, separate data sets because in such an environment, the data can have associated inconsistencies (e.g. if the data is stored on multiple nodes, the data may not be stored in its entirety on one of the nodes, giving inconsistent “views” of the data) and access to the data set can be unreliable (e.g. because one or more nodes may not be available).
A current solution to this problem involves pre-configuration of the environment to define the location and structure of the data sets. This is obviously complex, time consuming and may not be possible in a truly distributed environment (e.g. wherein nodes can be owned by different owners; wherein the location of a data set is often not known/cannot be controlled; and wherein the nodes themselves do not know each other).